ALTERED CARBON : LOTS TO THINK ABOUT

Since we’re all looking for streaming series to binge while we’re on lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic, I thought I’d recommend an older science fiction series you can watch right now that will actually force you to use some brain cells.

Altered Carbon's anti-heroic Takeshi Kovacs

I’m assuming you’ve already been through all the seasons of The Expanse on Prime Video (see Laurie’s review here). But there’s another show that also requires you to put your thinking caps on because, like all the best SF, it uses real science, character development and intricate subplots along with the action. If you’d rather just veg out on the couch, better look elsewhere.

The newer show Altered Carbon on Netflix is a different kind of science fiction from what you might be used to if you’re a Trek or Star Wars or even an Expanse fan. Even though space travel and distant planets and even aliens are part of the premise, this is really a show about what it means to be human, particularly when you take death out of the equation. I will admit I’ve only watched the first season (of two) so far. But, wow, what a first season!

Add in the usual income and class divisions—the rich “Meths” (for “Methuselahs”) live in elevated mansions high above the packed slums of what used to be San Francisco—and the disregard for physical life that a handy sleeve replacement engenders in the rich, and you have a formula for disaster. Not to mention an environment rich in philosophical ideas worth pursuing—gender fluidity and racial identity, for example, or immortality.

Not surprisingly, the plot for the first season involves the murder of a rich Meth and a poor prostitute, which turn out to be related (sorry, not much of a spoiler there, really). The Meth, now in a cloned sleeve (James Purefoy), hires our anti-hero (Joel Kinnamen), the last member of a defeated rebel group called the Envoys, to find out who killed him. The answer to that question is more complicated than you can imagine, reveals corruption in the police department (not unexpected) and brings up lots of stuff from our hero’s past. Oh, and even more sex and violence. If you’re squeamish about such things, this is not the show for you.

Subplots along the way investigate the humanity of artificial intelligences and the idea of psychological manipulation via cyberspace, a la THE MATRIX. In Altered Carbon such a thing is called a construct, and the Envoy soldiers who are part of the rebellion against the world order of stacks and sleeves and virtual immortality are taught to escape the construct using the power of their minds. A useful thing to know if you are being tortured in virtual reality.
  
Season Two of Altered Carbon replaces the intense and rugged Joel Kinnamen with Anthony Mackie of AVENGERS fame. (A new sleeve—get it?) Not sure how I’ll react to that; I really liked Kinnamen in the role of Takeshi Kovacs. The second-season plot has Kovacs returning to the planet where the Envoy rebellion was defeated (Harlan’s Planet—love that reference to the iconic SF writer Harlan Ellison!) to solve yet another series of murders, thirty years after the time of Season One. There he is finally led to the whereabouts of his former lover and leader of the Envoys, Quell Falconer (played beautifully by Renee Elise Goldsberry), alive after nearly 300 years.
  
It should be mentioned that Will Yun Lee (currently also playing Dr. Alex Park in The Good Doctor) plays Kovacs in flashback, that is, in his original body. Nice to see this talented actor in a different kind of role.

Altered Carbon may not be everyone’s cup of Earl Grey, hot, but I for one can’t wait to see where this show goes in its sophomore season and beyond. (There are solid rumors of a third season in the works.) It’s good to have your mind stretched a little between episodes of Pawn Stars and Ridiculousness. 

Cheers, Donna